If You Fail This Vsauce Quiz, Michael Might Be Disappointed

The wrinkling of fingers in water is not due to skin soaking and swelling, but because of a response from the nervous system. The body constricts blood vessels in the fingers through vasoconstriction, causing the skin to pucker. This is believed to be an evolutionary adaptation that helps improve grip in wet conditions—sort of like nature’s version of tire treads. Scientists found that when nerve function is damaged, wrinkles don’t form, which confirms this isn’t just a passive process. So your body’s flex is actually a grip-enhancing life hack.

If Earth were to suddenly stop spinning, inertia would fling everything on its surface eastward at roughly 1,000 miles per hour (near the equator). Buildings, oceans, and you included. This momentum is due to Newton's First Law—objects in motion stay in motion. The atmosphere would also continue moving, causing catastrophic winds and destruction. It’s one of those scenarios that sounds sci-fi but follows very real physics. Earth’s spin gives us gravity stability and ocean currents, so removing that balance would create total chaos.

As we age, our perception of time shifts because our brains record fewer novel experiences. When you're young, everything is new, so your brain takes lots of mental snapshots. As you age, life becomes routine, and your brain condenses those repetitive moments, making them feel shorter in memory. This is a cognitive trick rooted in information processing: more memory = longer perceived time. Hence, childhood summers felt endless, while adult years blur by like skipped ads.

Yes, under quantum mechanics, particles like electrons can exist in a state called superposition—where they occupy multiple states or positions simultaneously. This was famously illustrated in the double-slit experiment and Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment. It's not science fiction, it’s quantum reality. The particle’s state only "collapses" into one when observed or measured. So technically, a particle can be here and there—until you try to peek. It breaks our classical intuition but is mathematically proven and experimentally verified.

You sound weird in recordings because you’re used to hearing your voice through both air conduction and bone conduction. Bone conduction lets you hear lower frequencies more richly. Recordings, however, only capture air-conducted sound, which lacks those internal skull vibrations. So what you're hearing is what everyone else hears—minus the self-bass boost. It’s not the microphone's fault; it’s reality giving you an honest playback of your vocal presence. No amount of mic filters can replicate the skull’s bass.

We don’t feel the Earth spinning because it moves at a constant speed and direction—like riding a super smooth airplane with no turbulence. Thanks to inertia and the lack of acceleration, our senses have no reason to alert us. There’s also no frame of reference; we’re spinning with everything else (air, buildings, oceans), so it’s all relative. Plus, Earth’s rotation speed is gradual across its 24-hour period. Unless the spin changed suddenly, we remain blissfully unaware.

Falling into a black hole would lead to “spaghettification”—a gruesome process where the gravity near your feet is way stronger than near your head (or vice versa), stretching you out into long strings. This happens due to extreme tidal forces near the singularity. You wouldn’t make it past the event horizon in one piece. The gravitational pull becomes so intense, it surpasses all molecular forces that hold matter together. In short, black holes aren’t portals—they’re physics’ paper shredders.

Dreams feel longer than real time because of altered time perception during REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. The brain is highly active in this stage, simulating rich experiences and scenarios, often compressed or stretched beyond normal time constraints. Some studies show dream durations align with real time, but subjectively, they feel longer due to the intensity and emotional weight. Memory stitching also contributes—your brain may combine multiple dream episodes into one “storyline,” making it feel epic.

Vsauce videos feel addictive because of their clever use of curiosity gaps and delivery. Michael Stevens explains complex ideas in digestible ways, combining clear visuals with serious questions that spiral into bigger concepts. He doesn’t just give answers—he builds context, adds humor, and finishes with open-ended thoughts that leave viewers wanting more. It’s like mental popcorn: you feel smarter, but you’re also entertained. The random yet structured format aligns with how the internet scroll-brain craves knowledge hits.

This is a modern version of the Ship of Theseus paradox. If you dismantle a ship and rebuild each half separately using original parts, neither can be conclusively called the “original” because identity over time is more philosophical than physical. This riddle questions continuity, identity, and change. In metaphysics, if an object is wholly replaced piece by piece, is it still the same object? Most would say no—it’s now something else entirely, even if it looks identical.